You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.(George Herbert)

The city was the sum of the whole century, the capital of the eighteen hundreds, of no particular country. Like millions of others, I passed time reading the newspapers and keeping up with what was happening in Europe. Acorns would get crushed. There were many omens of how everything would turn out.

There were still a few remnants of the World’s Fair over by the Palais Royal. Not very many. The latest and most shocking incident was that the Lipschitz sculpture, ‘Prometheus Strangling the Vulture’, had been chopped to bits. Then it was put into storage, in some secret place. Crumbling rough grey stone that gave no idea of its shape. Rumour had it that the statue had offended official policy, and all sorts of things were certainly in the air. There was no longer any sign of the sculpture near the Palais Royal. More…

About the author

Kirsti Simonsuuri (born 1945) is a scholar and author. Among her publications are works of poetry and essays as well as novels. Simonsuuri has translated into Finnish works by authors including Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Euripides, Aeskhylos and Shakespeare. She lives in Helsinki.